


Same As It Ever Was

by sunriseseance



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: I truly do not know, Mind Manipulation, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:40:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunriseseance/pseuds/sunriseseance
Summary: He tries to love the heels. Really, he does. He knows Dave loves him in them. He knows, hey, it’s his job to look good. Right? Dave fixes cars and Klaus fixes dinner and cleans the house and looks oh so pretty. So, yes, he has to wear the heels. He doesn’t own any other shoes and he can’t go walking around barefoot. Not with his toenails painted black. Why were they black again? And, say, why did his wrist look so blank? He traced a shape that he couldn’t place onto his skin and waited for something to appear. Like invisible ink._-_-_-_-Life is perfect for the Hargreeves, which must mean something is wrong. How fortunate that Klaus is smarter than anyone gives him credit for.
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves/Patrick, Dave/Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch, Dolores/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 270





	Same As It Ever Was

**Author's Note:**

> If you know me, you know how I feel about intelligent Klaus. This is 99% a love letter to the Talking Heads and 1% Smart Klaus Propaganda aimed directionlessly at a fandom that thinks hes stupid. Happy quarantine!!

The heels clue Klaus in first. Not the clarity, not the slowed-down life, not even the way he means it when he smiles. No, shallow as it makes him feel, the heels are the first hint. He has an array in his closet, all modestly sized and brightly colored. The toes taper off into a point that makes him feel dignified-- dainty, even-- when he wears them. Does he even like dainty? He must, right? They remind him of mom. Of mom’s heels, in mom’s closet, in mom’s room that he can’t picture. Not for the life of him.

The shoes remind him of mom’s heels, which is to say they scare the shit out of him. No, he can’t wear heels. Hasn’t since he was a kid, right? Since he wore mom’s heels and tripped down the stai—no. No, they lived in a single-level house. Maybe the stairs outside? No, he remembered the sound of his jaw on the wood. He remembered how long the fall was, how scary. He remembered mom finding him at the bottom, and she never went outside. Did she? Didn’t she? What kind of mother doesn’t take her children to the park?

Maybe it was at the Governor’s Ball where they’d been honored. Must’ve been big, wood stairs at the capitol building. He must’ve worn heels from mom’s closet to the Governor’s Ball, and fallen down the stairs. Except, why were they being honored? Except, there was no way Father would let him out of the house in heels, right? Father was a good man, a kind man, but even he had his limits. And, really, why were they at the Governor’s Ball? He’d have to ask Diego.

He tries to love the heels. Really, he does. He knows Dave loves him in them. He knows, hey, it’s his job to look good. Right? Dave fixes cars and Klaus fixes dinner and cleans the house and looks oh so pretty. So, yes, he has to wear the heels. He doesn’t own any other shoes and he can’t go walking around barefoot. Not with his toenails painted black. Why were they black again? And, say, why did his wrist look so blank? He traced a shape that he couldn’t place onto his skin and waited for something to appear. Like invisible ink. 

“Everything okay?” Dave asks, hugging Klaus from behind. Klaus watches the way Dave melts a bit when they touch. Revels in it. Thank god for mirrors.

“Yeah, yes. I just—do I have shoes that aren’t heels?” Klaus feels silly even asking. He feels silly for not noticing Dave woke up, too. 

“Well, gee, baby I don’t really know. I don’t keep track of your shoes.” Dave scratches at Klaus’s hair. 

Something in Klaus’s stomach sickens at the word baby. He hates being called that. He knows he hates being called that. That’s what the men on the streets would call him when they paid him for—and he used the money for—no. No, right? Not that. 

“You’re right. Silly question. Sorry I didn’t get breakfast ready before you were up. I was—I don’t know where my head is.”

“You need help finding it? You’ll need it tonight.”

“Why’s that?” Klaus turns to face Dave. He lets their chests touch. Feels the scratch of Dave’s wedding band on his back as Dave rubs it oh-so-gently.

“You don’t remember? We’re going to Five and Dolores’s tonight. And I’m not supposed to tell you this, my little blabbermouth, but Diego’s gonna propose to Eudora. You’re making scalloped potatoes, remember?”

Blabbermouth?

And yes, of course Klaus remembers. He remembers Five’s wedding and Five’s house and the phonecall last week when Five set all of this up. He remembers everything, yeah, except why is Five a little boy? Who lets little boys get married?

“Yes, yes of course. Sorry. I just—I’m sorry. I’ll get dressed, and I’ll make breakfast, and then we’ll work in the garden?”

He pulls himself out of Dave’s arms, although he doesn’t want to. Although, he does want to. There’s something in the smell of his lover that turns his stomach. Something about the cavity of his chest. 

Dave doesn’t notice. 

“I’ll work in the garden. You’ll make potatoes and then you and Allison have to distract Eudora for the day while Diego sets up. Don’t let Allison know you know, though, or I’ll never hear the end of it. Your family, I swear.”

“Tell me about it,” Klaus says on instinct because, well, his family sucks, right? But he can’t grasp a reason why. Not even a fight they had as kids.

Klaus looks at all of the a-line skirts and polka-dots and gentle slopes in his closet and, no, those don’t feel right either. Why on earth did he buy them? He pulls out the blackest one, which is to say the pink one with black polka dots, and lets it be. The shoes, though? Those stay off. He can be barefoot in his own house.

“You look so pretty, baby” Dave says. Klaus doesn’t wilt at either sentiment. He loves them. 

The potatoes are fresh, Dave says, from the farmers market. That makes them a little harder to cut, but a lot better to cook with. Klaus knows this like he knows the recipe and like he knows he’s made it a thousand times. A thousand times. Mom taught him and Allison and Vanya to cook when they were kids. While the boys—the other boys?—played in the yard.

Except she didn’t, did she? Klaus remembers a kitchen, and a table next to it. A kitchen they were only allowed in for breakfast and lunch. A table they couldn’t leave until dismissed. A smooth hand pushing him back to his chair when he tried to peek in a simmering pot of stew. A window, across from him, that looked up at the outside world as if the kitchen dug into the ground. A basement. A basement they didn’t have in their single story home. He feels eyes on the back of his neck as he thinks this.

The cheese sauce is delicious.

After watching Dave from the little window in their little kitchen for twenty little minutes, Klaus feels like he’s swimming. Dave picks the same weed three, four, five times. Harvests a tomato that he harvested. Looks back, waves, pushes up his newly-required glasses, looks down to pick that same weed all over again. Jesus. This is wrong, right? He doesn’t want to watch anymore, but he can’t seem to look away.

He should be cleaning. Or bathing. Or choosing out a new outfit to wear when Allison comes to pick him up. Or working up the courage to put on a goddamn pair of his own goddamn shoes. He shouldn’t be watching his husband kneel forward, pick a weed that doesn’t exist, kneel back. Over and over and over and over and over and he feels sick. When he was little he swore he’d never get married. Maybe this is why. 

His head swims with it and he breaks out in a sweat and he can barely stand or keep water down and he hasn’t felt this bad since—since when? He feels the threads of it on his fingertips but he can’t grab them with enough delicacy. 

They snap.

The moment is gone. 

Dave is coming in.

Klaus doesn’t want to see Dave, which is not a feeling he should have. He knows this. He knows he wants to see Dave every day for the rest of his life. So why is he running? Why are his feet carrying him to the bathroom? Why is he locking the door? The tumblers clang into place. His hands shake and he’s going to fall over and brain himself if he doesn’t catch his balance. He can only remember feeling so terrified twice in his life—except he can’t. He can’t remember it at all. So he can’t remember ever feeling this terrified.

It’s just Dave. 

Klaus catches himself in the medicine cabinet mirror above their little blue sink and God he looks a mess. His normal, crisp cat-eye eyeliner is smudged beyond recognition. He’s pale. He’s gaunt. His hair looks like he ran through a wind tunnel. After a camping trip. He wants a hug, maybe. Or to ask Dave what he thinks of all this. But he can't. He knows this. He can’t.

Because Dave is dead, isn’t he?

The specifics are foggy. They are. But Something about the slumped-over posture in the garden tripped a wire. Pulled a thread. Klaus remembers feeling empty and cold and angry and so, so overwhelmingly sad. Sadder than he’d ever felt before, and sadder than he could possibly hope to feel again. He remembers talking to Dave as the light went out in those big, pretty blue eyes. He remembers running, after. Dave died. Dave is knocking on the door, asking in a sweet voice if Klaus is feeling alright because he ran into the bathroom so fast.

“I’m fine, hon, I just tried the arugula. Was rotted to shit. Made me nauseous.” That’s one thing, at least, that Klaus knows for sure: he’s good at lying.

He also knows he isn’t a fucking blabbermouth. He remembers months of back and forth with Dave. He remembers a fight. Their first. A fight that broke because Klaus wouldn’t even tell Dave his goddamn birthday. Your birthday, Hargreeves? That’s a secret, too? Next you’ll tell me Klaus isn’t your real name. 

Ha.

Ha.

Hargreeves? 

Why did Dave call him that?

Klaus hears Dave try the bathroom doorknob again. 

“You’ve usually got a stronger stomach than that, baby, are you sure that’s all?” Dave asks. Klaus smiles, a bit, at being called baby a second time. He hates it. He knows he hates it.

He’s losing his mind.

“Honestly? No. I feel like shit. I’ve felt weird all morning.” Klaus leans against the door. He doesn’t know if it’s to be closer to Dave or to keep him locked out.

Not that Klaus’s body is big enough, powerful enough to resist a guy like Dave in any way. He feels sicker, again, at the thought.

“I can tell, baby. Do you want me to take your temperature?”

And oh, what a novel idea. Maybe he’s just sick. Maybe he’s hallucinating. Dave didn’t die, right? He’s right there. On the other side of the door. Worried sick about him, probably, like the good husband he is. Klaus reaches up and orders his shaking fingers to undo the lock. He feels them try to refuse but—He’s sick. Dave can make him better.

“Here, I have a thermometer right here,” Dave says. And he does. In his hand. Right there. It’s not weird. It’s not it’s not it’s not. It’s not. 

Klaus doesn’t gag when Dave sticks it under his tongue.

“I got the garden looking all spiffy. You’re gonna love the flowers I planted, too. They won’t bloom till next spring but I promise. It’s gonna amaze you.”

Klaus makes a noise, but keeps his dutiful mouth shut.

“The potatoes smell wonderful, baby. Better than ever before. I swear. Though I suppose I always say that.” And yes. He always does. Klaus remembers.

“Hmm. You’re a little warm.” Dave tries to put the thermometer away without letting Klaus see. Klaus watches the almost-inconspicuous twist of his wrist. The quick journey back into the cover. He also sees the reading. 65 degrees farenheit, 18.3 celcius. Clear as day. Dave doesn’t say anything else. 

“You think I’m still good to go to the party tonight?” Klaus hasn’t decided, when he asks, what he hopes the answer will be. Dave smells like Dave. He’s warm and soft like Dave. His chest feels wrong, though. 

“I think that’s up to you, baby. But I doubt a one-degree fever is dangerous. Or contagious. You’re fine.”

“Well that’s good,” Klaus says, slipping a practiced smile onto his face “because Allison just pulled up.”

And he's right.

Klaus forces himself into the shortest, widest pair of heels he sees in his closet, and walks out the door. The sun on his ankles feels strange. The breeze uncomfortable. He likes skirts. He does. He knows this about himself like he knows his kitchen was in a basement, and he fell down a flight of stairs. He knows too, though, that they’re not all he likes. And not this pretty. This polished. Christ, where’s the dirt? 

Klaus hasn’t seen Allison in a skirt since they were kids, except that he sees her in one now. Long, elegant dresses, maybe. On a television. Why would she be on television? Why would her hair look like a bona fide Jackie O? 

Why wouldn’t it?

She opens the door to her car for him when he fails to respond to her greeting. Like she doesn’t notice him at all. She smiles. She asks if he’s getting in. She puts him in the back and his throat closes up. 

“Claire is with Patrick’s mom today” Allison says before Klaus asks. Not that Klaus was going to ask, because he knows Claire is with Patrick. Knew, at least. 

“That’s awful nice of her” Klaus replies because it feels right for his role. 

“Eudora is gonna be so happy. I can’t wait to see it. I remember when Patrick proposed to me.”

Klaus remembers it too. He didn’t. Allison, 24 at the time, told Patrick that they were getting married and Patrick agreed. Allison bought her own ring. Allison planned the wedding alone. Klaus tried his best not to want to rip Patrick apart with his teeth. Because he made her happy. 

Allison wasn’t supposed to mention the engagement to Klaus. 

“And when Dave proposed to you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile so brightly. Oh, love is beautiful” Allison continues. He wants to ask her if she means it. 

Dave proposed to Klaus in the mechanic shop when Klaus brought him lunch for their anniversary. Salami on white with an orange from the farmer’s market that looked so big it might burst with juices. Allison was so pregnant at the time she almost matched the orange, but she came anyway because she loved him. Klaus didn’t know she was in the shop. Klaus can picture this all. He can picture the back of his own head. 

He smiles into the memory. 

Dave told Klaus that he was sorry they could never get married, but that he hadn’t spent any of his GI bill money. That they’d buy a cabin in some woods in Wyoming or Montana and they’d be so far away from any of this hell or any people who might give a shit about them. Dave said they’d get a cat, but gave up that dream easily when he learned that Klaus was allergic. Dave promised none of this hurt would touch them there. He promised it would be quiet. 

“Dave is a special one,” Klaus says as he pulls at a thread in his skirt. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet him” Allison says, and Klaus swears he sees her face falter in the rear view mirror before it rights itself and her mouth adds “sooner.” 

Klaus feels his heart stop. 

“What did you say?” he asks before he can think better of it. 

“I said I’m sorry--I mean I didn’t meet him until the day he proposed to you. He’s so kind. I wish I could’ve known him sooner.” 

“You could have” Klaus says, but they’ve pulled into Eudora’s driveway. She’s in a dress like his. Her face makes his heart race. 

Allison doesn’t respond. 

Eudora waves to them and walks her way to the front seat and she doesn’t falter in her heels and Klaus knows that’s wrong because he swears she should be in tennis shoes and why does it come back to the goddamn heels again, huh? 

The slam of the door sends a shock through Klaus’s body and he feels like he should be elsewhere but it won’t paint itself clearly. Blobs of green, sound overhead, a name spilling out of his mouth like blood blood blood. He’s paralyzed. Allison and Eudora talk about the weather. 

It’s beautiful as always. 

They get lunch, and then they go shopping, and Klaus tries to find something he thinks he’d like to wear, but he can’t. The day bleeds together and the blood gushes out and smears all over him and he cannot stop the heart (his heart?) from beating. 

Eudora buys a dress for Five’s party and it’s beautiful, which is good. It’s the dress she’ll get proposed to in. Engaged in. There’s not a universe where she says no. Or if there is, it isn’t this one. 

This realization chills him. 

They’ve hit every green light. Eudora’s dress was 60% off. Klaus’s potatoes were cooked to perfection and Allison’s shoes--kitten heels--didn’t have a scuff mark on them. Allison could go to her mother-in-law’s house and hug her daughter if she wanted to. 

Klaus got a full night’s sleep last night. 

The thread breaks, again, and they pull into Five’s driveway. The evening is just beginning, bringing with it golden light and a chill that he knows will make Dave lend him his jacket. He doesn’t hate the thought. 

Five’s house is clean. The furniture sits at nice angles around a nice fireplace and nice books sit on nice shelves. There’s no booze. A woman who Klaus knows is Dolores greets them at the door. She had a plastic smile but she’s flesh and blood. He’s seen her a thousand times. 

She invites them in and offers them a cheese platter. Charcuterie, his mind supplies, and he grasps onto it. It feels real. She tells him that the boys aren’t here yet, but that Dave called ahead to say that Klaus wasn’t feeling well. Is he feeling better now? Yes, yes he is. 

It’s a lie. 

There’s a map on the wall and Klaus finds Vietnam on it and sees that Ho Chi Minh City is called Saigon which feels both familiar and wrong. Is familiar, and is wrong. Both. Both at the same time. 

How does a person ask what year it is without sounding crazy? 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost” Allison says to him, her hand on his shoulder. The contact makes him jump. She notices and squeezes harder. 

He laughs at that. He knows why. He knows why. He knows he knows he knows he knows he knows why. 

“Would that be so weird?” he asks. He faces her and he sees a look in her eyes that he hopes he’s mirroring.

“I don’t know,” she replies, “do you have a smoke?”

Klaus should. He’s smoked since 13. He doesn’t though. 

“Do you think they’d let us head to the corner store to get one?” he asks, and he means it. The world is closing in on him. He’s never liked feeling trapped. 

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t” the other Allison is back, now. Just as quickly as she wasn’t. He feels his head swim and he fights the warmth of it. He won’t be brought under. 

His hands shake and Dave, who is here now, grabs them. He’s in a button down with familiar striping and a jacket that matches too well for it to have been Klaus’s Dave that chose it out. Klaus would pull his hand away, would sock the imposter, but the face is right. Right. Right there. 

“You okay, baby?” Dave asks and it’s wrong. It must be wrong. 

“I’m peachy” Klaus replies with a smile, just to test it. 

“You want some juice?”

Klaus is thirty five. Why on earth would he want juice? 

“Is this map wrong, hon?” Klaus asks instead, pointing to Vietnam. There’s no right answer. 

“Don’t worry your pretty little head with smart things like that, baby. You know that’s not your strong suit. I’m gonna get you some apple juice. Fresh squeezed.” Dave walks away.

No right answer, but that was the wrong one. 

This isn’t his Dave. This isn’t any Dave at all. This is a trap or a joke or Hell itself but this is not Dave.

Klaus got a better score than any of his goddamn siblings in Geography, and Dave would never say something like that. Not to Klaus. Not to anyone else. 

So why did he? 

Klaus has two theories. Either this is Hell, and Hell is the someone wearing the love of his life like a suit and using it to degrade him, or this is something else and he just made someone nervous. That comment wasn’t accidental. 

Klaus knows how to hurt people. Klaus knows how to hurt people in ways that get them to do what he wants. He knows that a ‘little’ in the right place can make someone feel silly. Silly enough to stop looking at a map that has to be wrong, even. 

He’s playing a game he’s the goddamn master of. If this is Hell he’s about to get a job offer.

###  _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Klaus lets them get to dessert. He lets Dolores compliment his dress, and Diego fumble with something in his pocket that is a ring but should be something else. Something sharp. Allison keeps opening the locket around her neck with a picture of Claire in it. He’s seen her shake her head six times since dinner started. 

Luther grabs one slice of pie, a buttermilk recipe from Bisquick that Allison made. It tastes awful. Allison cannot bake. Luther has never taken one slice of anything in his life. Klaus cannot find a why in this, but he knows it like he knows that Saigon is old and bleeding. 

Diego takes his hand out of his pocket. Go time. 

“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” he says. He faces Dave and watches the face falter a bit. Diego shrinks back into himself.

“It’s always lovely this time of year. Hope it means a mild winter” Dave finishes.

“I don’t know” Dolores says “I do love sledding.” 

“You sled?” Allison asks. She grasps at her locket and Klaus resists the urge to signal to her in some way. He cannot be sure. 

“Who doesn’t love sledding?” Eudora says, leaning into Diego’s shoulder, “Diego took me sledding on our first date. It was so romantic.” 

Sledding is cold, and fast, and wet, and dangerous, and none of this doesn’t sound like Diego, but Diego is not romantic. 

“Did he now? He always told us the first date was dinner and a cowboy movie.” Allison is with him, then, because Klaus knows that Diego took Eudora sledding in the same way he doesn’t know that Dave is dead. 

Diego’s brow furrows. He puts his hand back in his pocket, and recoils. Eudora falters. He watches her face turn blank. Watches her not blink until her eyes almost water. Revels in a silence so false, so uncomfortable he could cut it with a knife if he had one. How did they cut the pie? 

“Well he was lying” Eudora says eventually. 

Klaus watches Luther’s face fall at his pie. It isn’t good because Allison cannot bake. 

Five sips at his water. 

“Say, where is Vanya?” Klaus directs this at Five. Tries to lock into his eyes. Klaus isn’t a fucking blabbermouth, but he has never been one for subtlety. 

“I uh-- work? She works for a symphony. Are they rehearsing?” Five asks Dolores and Klaus’s stomach falls. He wants this. 

“They are, dear” Dolores says, because it's the easy answer. Because it’s the answer something artificial like her would jump to. A yes or no question invites the easiest yes. But lose a battle, win a war. Klaus looks around the room for a camera, a lighting kit, anything. He feels Allison kick his foot. His bare foot. He abandoned his heels under the table. 

“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? They must have a big performance” Five sips at his water, again, and makes a face like he knows it should taste worse. Bitter. Stinging, even. 

Diego removes his hand from around Eudora and reaches into his pocket again. His face scrunches around something, and Klaus can see the hesitation, the return, the departure. 

“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” Klaus says to Dave. He can feel a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. If this doesn’t work, hey, he’s fucked. 

But if it does?

It does. 

Dave smiles a familiar smile. Klaus can see Allison’s horror in his periphery. 

“It’s always lovely this time of year. Hope it means a mild winter.” 

Allison knocks her glass over. Klaus sees the intention in the action. 

Diego proposes to Eudora after Luther gets paper towels and cleans up the mess. Eudora says yes. She cries and her ring looks beautiful against her dress. Dave puts an arm around Klaus and Klaus’s eyes catch the wedding band. The wedding band. They had a band at their wedding, right? A zydeco band. 

Five. Five wants this world, whatever it is. Klaus sees it in the way Five leans into Dolores, the way he looks fondly on the maps on the wall, the way he didn’t let the repetition of the weather bring him down in any way. 

They put on a record. A little bit of Ella to bring home the mood while they chat and drink juice. The house, moderate and cozy, is decorated like it’s the 1950s. Saigon on the map suggests it is. There’s a book, though, on the bookshelf from 1965. Before the fall of Saigon but far after the dress Klaus has on would’ve gone out of style. Klaus would never wear a dress like this, but he is.

Dave is dead.

Allison borrows Five’s phone and uses it to call Claire, who picks up after two rings and happily answers Allison’s question about school in the same way all three times Allison asks it. Klaus watches her open the locket and look at the little girl inside, and he watches her fall apart. 

“I love you, baby.” Dave pulls him closer. Klaus puts a hand on Dave’s chest, right in the center. Solid, and dry, heart beating firmly. 

The dangerous thing about this, all of this, is that Klaus could get used to it. He loves Dave and he knows that with every part of his mind. Knows it through any fog or fear that attacks him. He knows he loves Dave and he knows this makes him happy. That’s the kicker, isn’t it? Klaus knows this is wrong because he feels so happy holding Dave that his chest aches like he’s the one that should have a gaping chest wound. 

This is wrong. He knows it is. He watches Five dance with Dolores, who is easy on her feet, and he knows she shouldn’t move like that. The smile on Five’s face, though, is addicting. 

The whole thing is addicting. 

“I love you too, Dave.” Klaus can taste bitterness. He feels it coat his tongue, like it has so many times before in so many ways he cannot place. He closes his eyes, wants to cover his ears, but why would he want that? Why would he want to do that? The holes drive him crazy. He could be happy like this, almost, but a Ha Ha Hargreeves never gets the last laugh. They’re a doomed people and he has to doom all of them along with him. 

“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” he says. He faces Dave and watches desperately for something he does not find. It leaves a hole in Klaus’s heart, like an open wound. 

“It’s always lovely this time of year. Hope it means a mild winter” Dave reaches up to brush a strand of hair out of Klaus’s eyes, but he doesn’t make it. 

Time slows down. Slows, slows, stops. 

###  _-_-_-_-_-_-_-

A woman walks into the room. She carries a briefcase, and her big, black skirt demands Klaus’s attention. She smiles at him with painted lips and he can see that she means it. Maybe he’ll get that job offer after all. 

She takes her time in silence, moseying around the room and letting Klaus become enraptured. A deliberate move, but Klaus lets himself fall for it. Her hand stops on the book Klaus focused on, too:  _ The Crying of Lot 49.  _ The first words he hears her speak are “those goddamned idiots.”

She takes a seat across from Klaus, on Diego’s lap. He’s frozen, orange, and does not notice. This all feels like the opposite of rose colored glasses. 

He waits for her to speak, and notes her smile again. His skirt calls for smoothing in her presence, but he decides to revel in wrinkles. 

“So,” she says as she lights a cigarette, “what did it?’

“I don’t know what you mean” he says. He knows what she means, but in another life he could’ve been a damn good lawyer. He tries never to ask questions he doesn’t know at least half the answer to. 

“Well,” she says, because she is almost as smart as him, “I guess this is why they say ‘if you want something done right you have to do it yourself,' huh? Shame.”

“What are you doing?’ 

She smiles at him, and offers him her cigarette.

“Me? I’m sharing a cigarette with an esteemed colleague. What are you doing, though, Klaus? That’s what I’d really like to know.”

“Is this Hell?” He knows the answer to that too, as he takes her cigarette. Hell cannot be so poorly run as to have bureaucracy. 

“This was supposed to be Heaven, Klaus, for the seven of you. Would’ve been, too, if I hadn’t trusted such an important job to such colossal dipshits. No, I should’ve overseen this myself.”

“What is this?” He knows what this isn’t, as he looks at Dave’s chest. 

“A consolation prize, I guess. How much do you know?”

“Not enough to answer that question.”

She smiles. Shifts her body on Diego’s legs. Looks deep into Klaus, and likes what she sees enough to bite her lip. Klaus shutters. He bites his tongue until it bleeds.

“You’re a clever one, Klaus Hargreeves. Perceptive. Our first mistake was underestimating you.”

“Who are you?’

She smiles like he’s given her the upper hand. 

“Shame you went and decided to get sober. Our second mistake was assuming that any amount of sobriety meant we could drug you without testing to see how well it works. If you were who you used to be, though, you’d know the answer to your question.”

Klaus’s stomach drops. He feels dizzy, and he rips a hole in his skirt. The thread comes into his fingers, and the fabric comes undone. He can feel the disparate pieces all around them, but he cannot sew them together, cannot bring them onto his body in a form he can recognize. He’s always been one for jumping the gun. 

“Dave is dead.” His voice catches on the D word. 

“He is. You’re right.”

“That isn’t Dave.”

“And that isn’t Eudora, Dolores doesn’t exist, and Allison’s little girl isn’t allowed to see her face to face. Or wasn’t, at least.”

An atomic bomb goes off in the distance. Metaphorically, of course. 

“They’re all dead?”

He spirals. He has to get control of this. Has to has to has to has to.

“You are the last six people alive, Klaus. I meant it when I said this was a consolation prize.”

He knows her game. 

“Vanya?”

“Okay, you’ve got me. She is… currently indisposed, but not dead. I was hoping to introduce her to you all soon. Maybe sort out her hair first, though.”

Okay. That’s something, isn’t it? There’s an outside to this. A Ho Chi Min to their Saigon. Vanya is alive and not here and that means there’s something else, right? Something beyond this? 

Why is everyone dead? Threads. Threads and Vanya and a concert she had to rehearse for and maybe, maybe, that all connects. Klaus looked like he just saw a ghost. Klaus has fought a thousand brain fogs like this and he’s won every fight enough to get his money’s worth. 

“The world ended.”

“Yes. The world ended.”

“And we had something to do with that.”

“Yes.”

“Well goddamn.”

“Couldn’t say it better myself.”

“Is the world ended now? Where we are?” He makes his eyes tear up a bit as he says this. This woman, whoever she is, does not seem like one moved by tears, but she may come to believe that he is moved by his own emotions. This is still his game. He’ll have her head for dessert instead of Allison’s goddamn inedible pie. 

“No, you couldn’t breathe there. Not this time.” She laughs, but stops in the middle of an inhale. Like she’s onto him. He takes a look at Dave. 

Dave died and it was near Saigon and Klaus cannot sew this quilt together but he has those two patches. That is not Dave. Dave is dead. 

“You shouldn’t have made me happy.” 

She straightens her skirt, and he notes a falter in the way her hand glides. She holds her face with poise but Klaus sees the downward turn of her lips, watches her suck on them as if she does this regularly. Like whenever she’s thinking through a problem without an easy solution. If there’s one thing Klaus has always been, it’s a problem. 

He wants to be wearing something he likes for this. He wants his siblings awake to see him finally fucking succeed at something. He’s getting ahead of himself. 

“You should stop this train of thought at the station, Klaus.”

“You’re afraid of us. You called this a consolation prize. Happiness for the six of us, and in return you get the end of the world. I’m not stupid.”

“I know that. For what it’s worth, I do know that. I’m sorry about whoever programmed that Dave. I have a great deal of respect for you.”

“You’re keeping us here because we could save the world, right? I have something in my head about the weight of the world.”

Time was already stopped, but it stops again. He’s laid his cards on the table, and he cannot pick them back up. 

“I can give you the real Dave, Klaus. Resurrection is impossible but healing a wound like that, after you left him but before he was truly gone, that is well within our capabilities. Perhaps I should’ve allotted that expense from the beginning. God, I should’ve done this all myself.”

Klaus’s heart sinks. He left before Dave was all the way dead, then, and he can’t even remember it. The past becomes more clear with every second he spends in this paused un-paused place, but it does not stitch together perfectly. Leaving sounds like him. 

“You could… the real Dave?”

She smiles like a snake, or a huntress. 

“Yes.”

Klaus turns to Dave, grabs his face. Kisses his lips. It’s wrong. Dave stays frozen. 

“The world for the real Dave?”

“Yes.”

He knows he is coming back to himself because he considers it. Really considers it. With the deep and fundamental selfishness that someone, somewhere taught him or else lead him to. The world for a single man, and he considers it. He’s sick.

“No.”

The woman bites her lip again and Klaus acts before he knows what he’s doing. He takes the heels he wore to the party from underneath the coffee table and he throws one at her. He misses, of course, because that’s not what he does. He doesn’t throw things. 

He thinks. 

While she’s ducking, and laughing, and the world is paused in a way he hopes is for her people, too, he bashes her in the head with the spike of the other heel. The crack of it makes him sick but he holds it all inside. He’s good at that. He knows that. 

The world comes back, and his siblings notice the body in his arms. Evidently, he is not very good at telling an alive body from a dead one. Dave and the other Nots carry on. 

“Oh my God” Allisons says. She holds her necklace. 

“Klaus, what have you done?” Five asks. 

“This is wrong.” Klaus says, as he drops the body to the floor.

“Murder? Yes. Murder is wrong, Klaus, who is that?”

“I don’t know, and that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

He watches faces falter all around him. Diego lets go of Eudora’s hand. Luther stares at the trash can where he dumped his pie. Five meets Klaus’s eyes dead on. He does not look around at the place he’s been living, or at the books on the wall. He does not watch his wife, who is not a real person, clean up absently the blood spilling onto the floor from the body’s head. Five looks at Klaus, as though he is the aberrant thing. 

“I think you should leave.”

“None of this is right, Five, and you know it.”

“I know you have murdered someone in my living room.”

“This isn’t right.”

“I know you have come into my home and you have manipulated my guests and I know--”

“You know this isn’t right.” Klaus wants to grab the boy by the shoulders and shake him.

“I know this is perfect.” Five’s voice falters. He bites his lip, mirroring the woman, and screws his eyes shut. For a second, Klaus feels guilty. 

“It shouldn’t be. Not for us.”

“This is all I’ve ever wanted, Klaus.” A plea. A desperate plea. They’re running out of time.

“Five, this is not your beautiful house, and that is not your beautiful wife.’ Dolores begins to move the body of the woman into the kitchen and Klaus makes a note to swear off of meat until they are totally out of this. 

“Did you just quote Talking Heads at me?” This shakes Five somewhere deep, and Klaus can see it. 

“You shouldn’t even know what Talking Heads is, Five. Not here. This is perfect, and we’re not allowed that. Not us.” 

“I want it.”

“I know. Me too. Dave is--”

“Dead” Five says with finality.

“Do you know what’s going on, Klaus?” Allison asks. She watches the front, and Diego watches the back.

“No. I just know we’re-- They have Vanya somewhere. We have to find her. Then we have to save the world.”

“Easy enough” Diego says. His eyes linger on Eudora, but he breaks away. 

“Any ideas where Vanya is?” Luther asks. 

“I don’t even know who we are, let alone where.” Klaus lets Allison lead them out the back. 

“I mean, hey, it’s just rescuing our sister and saving the world. How hard can it be?” Allison asks as she shuts the door behind them. 

###  _-_-_-_-_-_-_-

They exit into a field that leads to a shopping mall. Or at least something that Klaus's brain, fogged and fractured as it is, sees as a shopping mall. Shapes cloud the corners of his vision. Human shapes. They keep running, and Klaus decides not to mention them. Perhaps it's natural to hallucinate. He lost the love of his life. A fake life, at that. 

Not a hallucination, though, he sees Luther looking broken, falling behind even Klaus's own fundamentally silly outfit and ineffectual shoes. And, well, that won't do. They seem to be in this together. 

"Luther, buddy, what's wrong?" he asks. He tries not to let the blood in his lungs dilute his speech.

"That was supposed to be our ideal world, right?" Luther speaks to his feet more than Klaus’s face.

Klaus doesn't know. He doesn't like being called stupid, least of all by Dave. A Dave that isn’t Dave. Did he make Dave up? This is Hell. 

"Yes, but they did a bad job." 

Luther scoffs. 

"But they did a job for everyone else, right? Why not me?" 

How on earth, or wherever they are, can Klaus answer that? Why not Luther? Is Luther so boring he had no Heaven? Is he mysterious? Unknowable? Is Luther dead, and they've let a robot into their midst? Does Luther even exist outside of this place?

" Maybe you're easily pleased" Klaus lands on. He watches the face, and hopes for something concrete. 

"No," Luther says, "I was miserable." 

"Then you had the gift of privacy. They weren’t watching you. " 

Klaus does not. A face appears in front of him. Right in front. An angry face. He cannot place it, although he feels it, guiltily, at his core. He holds his breath. Stops running. The others do notice, and stop as well. Above them, the sky cracks with thunder and a slick rain begins to fall. The face does not get wet, although Klaus can feel his makeup running. 

He should know this person.

He looks to Allison wildly, hoping for some hint at what he should do about teleporting people. The fright in her eyes melts his insides a little bit. Is she afraid of him? For him? Did she used to be? Why does this feel like a pair of old shoes? Why does everything come back to shoes?

The face, attached to a body that wears a hoodie Klaus envies in the cold of the rain, speaks. Klaus strains to hear what the face says, but can’t. Can’t. Too many people talking. He covers his ears with his hands and falls to his knees. The fabric of the dress muddies in the dirt. 

Allison’s hand on his shoulder makes him flinch.

“Klaus?” she says gently “what’s wrong? You’re scaring us.”

Klaus looks to the face instead of answering. The face, who he should maybe call the man, scratches something in Klaus’s brain. Something like Saigon, but deeper. Something related to a clock in London, maybe, or a benefits package at a job. 

“Who are you?” he asks. 

“I’m your sister, Allison. Klaus, what’s going on?” Allison leans down to his level, and dirties her own dress. Dark brown, like old dried blood. 

“No, I know you. I’m talking to him.” He gestures to the face, who looks sadder than he did when he first appeared. Somewhere, Klaus knows he shouldn’t have to gesture to the face. That if a person appears, that should be all they’re talking about. Somewhere else, this feels normal. 

Allison looks where Klaus points, and he watches her eyes go right past the face and into the middle distance. Of course, she doesn’t see him. She never has. None of them ever have, right? 

This is familiar. 

“I’m Ben,” the face takes the thick silence that falls as opportunity, “I’m your brother. I’m--”

“You’re dead” Klaus finishes. 

“Sorry, what?” Diego asks. 

“Not you. The face. Ben. Ben is dead.”

“Who is Ben, Klaus?” Allison asks. She pulls him to his feet and tries to get him moving, but he digs his heels in. 

“Our brother. Ben is dead.” 

The figures at the edges of Klaus’s vision begin to solidify, their voices become louder, and Klaus laughs at an old joke. He lets Allison lead him away. 

“We laughed when you said it looked like I had seen a ghost.” Klaus watches her closely, to see if she gets it too. 

“I did” she doesn’t stop walking, but she doesn’t stop him from talking, either. 

“I do. I do see ghosts. All the time. Ben is our brother. He’s dead. He died. That means this isn’t Hell, right? That we can get out of here?”

“Klaus I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry.” 

“This is bad” Ben says, and Klaus hums in agreement, “you all really don’t remember anything. You seeing dead people shouldn’t be a revelation, Klaus.”

“I’m sorry?” Klaus does not like Ben’s tone. 

“No, it’s okay, Klaus. This is all so difficult” Allison says, she reaffixes her grip on his arm, and he finds comfort in the warmth of her living body. 

“You guys are, okay, we don’t have time for the whole thing, do we? You guys need to save Vanya. There’s a door in the back of Martin’s grocery, a half mile from here. That leads out of the studio and into the Commission proper. Go there. I’ll lead you to Vanya.” 

“We need to go that way” Klaus says. He tries to use his weight to alter their course but Allison is strong. 

“Into town? Are you crazy?” Five says “the C--”

“Commission could find us. I know. What’s the Commission, Five?”

Five stops in his tracks. Klaus can see his mind fighting itself. The right Five wins, and they alter their path. 

Klaus feels his brain melting out of his ears as Ben explains, loosely, their situation. He doesn’t know much, see, but he knows the Commission took them and put them here. They’re not dead. This isn’t Hell. Get Diego something to throw. Something sharp. Don’t let Allison hear any rumors. Don’t lose Five. I’m sorry, Klaus, but you see dead people. Like me. Vanya is dangerous, but she’s your sister. Save her, save the world. The world? You, too? Yes, Klaus, the whole fucking world. Don’t screw this up. 

Klaus’s skin itches and he does his best to ignore a pit of desire growing inside of him. He wouldn’t know what to fill it with, either way. He ignores the dead, screaming around him. He ignores the voices of his alive siblings, too. He ignores the pain in his feet and the sting of the cold and the hurt in his chest and the guilt that, for even a second, he considered staying here to be with Dave, and the guilt that, for more than a second, he decided to leave Dave dead forever instead of staying here. He wonders where here is, and why it has rain. 

When they step through the door at the back of the grocery story, the literal back, behind the store, a popping sound surrounds them. They are not where they were. Klaus holds his breath. The ambient screams of ghosts don’t seem to echo around here. As if nobody has died. 

“Ben is dead” Luther says, finally, the first words spoken in the real world, “I can feel it. I killed him.” 

Luther leans himself on a wall, and Klaus has the urge to touch the man’s shoulder, offer some comfort, but he chokes on something and resists it. 

“Tell him that isn’t true” Ben says. 

“Ben says that isn’t true.” The quiet of Klaus’s voice shocks his own ears. He’s quiet, isn’t he. Usually. Big mouthed, but quiet. Not a blabbermouth. 

“Does Ben know where Vanya is?” Allison asks, “we can’t leave without Vanya.”

The walls around them are white, the floors are speckled tile, checkered. The air smells clean and nothing else. An overwhelming sense of bureaucracy weighs the place down. Klaus smiles. Five must’ve hated it here, he thinks, although the thought feels like a knife cutting through fabric. 

“Yeah, you don’t know the half of it, Allison” Klaus says. He follows Ben down one hallway, up another, and is pleased to see the others behind him. They’re quiet, like for once in all of their lives they’re waiting for Klaus to speak. Like they want to hear what he has to say. 

He chooses to relish the moment, selfishly, before continuing. He enjoys the click-clack sound of Allison’s heels on the floor, echoing through hallways. 

“Vanya ends the world. They want her because they want to end the world. We need to get her out, and keep her from doing that. Also, does it seem weirdly empty in here to anyone else?”

Nobody. Nobody in any of the offices, or walking in the hallways. Nobody in the bathrooms Five checks before they walk all the way past them. Nobody anywhere. It would be easy to say this is all too easy. 

“Vanya ends the world?” Five says, at the same time Allison says “I noticed that. I bet they know we’re coming. They’re guarding her.”

Klaus knows that this should feel unexpected, these questions from these people, but he also knows he expects it. He knows it like he knows their kitchen wasn’t actually in a basement, but a back room on the first floor, where the light got cut off easily. He knows the place was big, and impersonal, and they had plenty of stairs. 

He knows Allison is right. 

“Do any of you remember how to fight?” he asks. Diego scoffs. 

“Do any of us know how to fight?” Luther asks. A funny statement from such a strong, gentle man. 

Klaus punches a glass window, in response. Cuts up his hand, shatters the glass which is not, thankfully, safety glass. The sound punches a hole in his gut. 

“Ben says you have a good arm, diego, and you need sharp shit. There was probably a better way for me to do this.”

“Yeah no shit,” Five says, “There’s knives in the room across the way.” Klaus watches a smile bloom on Five’s face as he says this. 

They’re coming back. 

“Reginald Hargreeves was a fucking monster.” Diego says, opening the door to the room Five indicated. There are knives aplenty. Diego pocketed some glass anyways, Klaus notes. 

A silence falls over them. Reginald Hargreeves was a monster. They were raised in terror, and they are terrified now. They are so, so good at failing, and what a thing to fail at. Their steps do not falter, though, there is no pause in the echoes of their feet down the many, many hallways. 

Finally, as light begins to break through the windows, as dawn cracks the horizon, Klaus sees people at the end of the hallway. Thirty five, he’d guess.

“Thirty six,” Five says, “all armed. Be careful. Move quickly.”

“Diego, take down any you can from here. Luther, take care of yourself, but you’re in front. Klaus, do what you can. You know what I mean by that, I hope, cause I don’t” Allison says. Klaus smiles. Maybe it’s better, sometimes, to not remember everything. She’s good at this. 

“What about me?” Five asks.

“You won’t listen to me, but if you want to… here” Allison takes off her heels, and gives them to Five. They are knife-point sharp, and Klaus sees the satisfaction lick its way into Allison’s eyes. 

It stays still, until it doesn’t. Until there’s a flurry and all Klaus can do is watch. Diego takes down three before there’s return fire. Luther gets shot and keeps going. Something swells to fill the pit in Klaus’s stomach, and his hands vibrate but he doesn’t know this. Not yet. Ben yells at him, over and over, about how it’s now! It’s now. Five takes out seven. Allison doesn’t kill any but knocks many, many out. Klaus clenches his fists and tries to breathe in the world. Luther kills three and doesn’t kill two. Klaus explodes outwards and Ben, full of tentacles, explodes with him, and then they are all dead. Every single agent. It is a masterpiece of blood. Klaus knows how to paint, he remembers, and it settles the horror in his stomach as Ben’s own horror snakes back in. It feels anti-climactic, like they've done this before a thousand times, or at least twice. Because they have done this before, most of it, a thousand times. 

“That was it, Klaus” Allison says, patting him on the shoulder. 

“I know. Somehow.” 

Vanya floats in a tank of water, breathing mask secured on her face. She looks peaceful, and pale against the backdrop of the bright blue water. Klaus feels some guilt in breaking the tank, breaking her away from all of this. He pauses. Five does not. Water rushes into the room, mixes and moves the blood and bodies on the floor. Vanya does not look like she’s breathing, but she is, and Klaus knows it because he is connected to death in a way the others have never understood, and never will. The voice of the woman he killed, the first one, echoes in his head. 

Klaus remembers everything, he thinks, or enough of everything to feel afraid of Vanya and to miss heroin. He knows Dave is real, and that he might see him again. 

Vanya looks tiny in Luther’s arms, because she is tiny. They walk out the door, the front door, and another pop rings through their heads. 

“1963,” Five says, “I know this place.”

Klaus breathes in the air and holds onto the pit inside of him. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have a possible potential sequel, or spiritual sequel, in mind for this piece so, hey, let me know if you want it!
> 
> I'm sunriseseance on Tumblr, if you wanna chat about Smart Klaus or anything else!!


End file.
